14th March 2016, saw six Partners from Cundall pack their bags, grab their business cards and hop on a plane over to Cannes in the South of France to take advantage of the four day networking event that is MIPIM.

This year, much like every year, MIPIM seemed to be bigger and better than ever, attracting over 4,800 investors, 1,189 developers and 370 key political leaders from across the property industry. Our Partners stayed busy during their time with jam packed meetings and events, with over 17,700m2 of exhibition area to cover, a strategy certainly needed to be adopted! Here is how a few of our Partners found MIPIM 2016;

Thoughts on MIPIM this year are good (except for the weather on Wednesday!). We met a lot of interesting people, found a large push on PRS and gathered up some good leads. Our hosted dinner to launch our 40th birthday celebrations was a great success, so much so that our Managing Partner, Tomás Neeson, managed to lose his voice! As always there were lots of people buzzing around, and quite a few virgins who had never experienced the whirlwind that is MIPIM. This can only be seen as a good sign for the future of the property market.

This year we teamed up with the Marketing Birmingham stand, and it gave us some excellent contacts. The area provided us with a good base to conduct our business and central point for the Cundall team to meet at. My usual tactics of collecting up MIPIM virgins prior to the event and preparing them paid dividends. As well as a big push on residential, industrial and university projects, there were some great opportunities in the Black Country that I have passed on to our specialist services.

Cautious optimism was the general vibe in the marketplace at MIPIM this year. There was a great deal of discussion on the pros and cons of Brexit and whether the figures really stack up for PRS in Manchester, neither of which were conclusive! The best part was hearing our clients talking so highly of Cundall to other clients (it took plenty of drinks to get to this stage!) and hosting our 40th anniversary dinner. As ever the real work following up leads starts now.

It was my first year representing Cundall at MIPIM, and it was very encouraging to receive such positive feedback from existing clients and colleagues on the business and experiences of working together. The overall mood at MIPIM was very upbeat, Manchester was very well represented as always and it was good to see the collective support behind the Northern Powerhouse and the opportunities this represents across the entire region. There were some reservations surrounding the impact of the Brexit debate on market confidence, but these were countered by feelings that once this was behind us, there would be a renewed wave of market activity.

As a MIPIM “first timer” I was struck by how many people from UK construction are locked in the same place for four days, I have attended MAPIC before and found it very worthwhile, but this has many more people to catch up with. There was good strong representation from London, Manchester and Birmingham, and Belfast had a very successful return after an absence of five years. Nearly everyone I spoke to was interested in Cundall’s global reach and multidisciplinary capabilities and how we further develop mutually beneficial connections across the globe.

If you would like further information on the projects Cundall is working on, please visit our website here.